Deaths at Storefront Abortion Clinics

“Handful of Abortion Clinics Put Poor at Risk” (April 5) should remind us of the importance of ensuring that abortion not only remains legal, but safe as well. The article raises legitimate concerns about the availability of quality reproductive health care for minority and low-income women. If, as you point out, abortion is one of the safest medical procedures available, why then is it so hard for women facing crisis pregnancies to obtain safe abortion services?

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the rate of unintended pregnancy is highest among low-income African American and Hispanic women. Yet, instead of developing programs to address this crisis and make abortion less necessary, abortion opponents have engaged in a campaign to stigmatize the procedure and make it more dangerous and difficult to obtain. The tactics of the anti-choice movement have contributed to a rapid decline in the number of abortion providers. Unless we reverse the trend and make quality care a real option for all women, what we see happening in California will only happen elsewhere.

KATE MICHELMAN, President

National Abortion and

Reproductive Rights

Action League, Washington

* We salute The Times for covering the problem of gross medical abuses in abortion clinics, especially storefront facilities that cater to poor immigrant women. As you suggested, although these providers “run into trouble” with the medical license board, they often go on practicing. The abortion law itself gives the provider tremendous leeway. A physician with no hospital privileges who performs an abortion on a woman who is 24 weeks pregnant in a storefront facility has not broken any laws.

For Charlotte Newhart to state that a first-trimester abortion is “safer than having your tonsils removed” is contrary to medical fact and nothing more than political rhetoric. The best physician performing the procedure in the cleanest clinic will tell you that the procedure has 100 documented surgical complications associated with it.

Those who favor legal abortion often do so because they want to provide a safe procedure and believe the decision is between a woman and her doctor. The reality is much different. Most women have never met the doctor who performs their abortion. After receiving a positive pregnancy test, a woman is free to schedule an abortion. It is akin to a woman detecting a breast lump, going to a clinic and directing a physician to perform a mastectomy. That is not good medicine.

JENNY BIONDI, Director

Development and Public Relations

Right to Life League of

Southern California, Pasadena